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Review: Gooden, Strawberry follow same path, struck bottom

High and Tight: The Rise and Fall of Dwight Gooden and Darryl
StrawberryBob Klapisch
Villard, $22

Dwight Gooden's no-hitter last week against the Mariners someday
might be recognized as one of the great pitching accomplishments
in history - not because of events in the game, but for the monumental
obstacles Gooden has overcome simply to get back into baseball.

Doc's precarious (and ongoing) battle against booze and drugs
is chillingly told in High and Tight by author Bob Klapisch, who
knows both men well from his days covering the Mets for several
New York newspapers. Their obvious trust in his fairness and judgment
had led to this unblinking, frequently unsettling account of two
baseball superstars who gained too much, too soon - and paid a
steep price for their fame.

Each man's life is retold, from childhood days to the present.
Gooden's story is especially disturbing because he grew up in
a seemingly well-grounded home environment with devoted parents.
His dad encouraged him to play ball at an early age, and before
he reached his teens, young Dwight had clearly displayed remarkable
pitching talent. Drafted right out of high school by the Mets,
Gooden spent just one full season in Class A ball, winning 19
games while striking out 300 batters in fewer than 200 innings.
The next year he was starting in the major leagues, and at 20,
became the youngest player ever to win the Cy Young Award.

Doc soon became the most popular athlete in the Big Apple. Friendly
to fans, available to the media, unhittable on the mound, Gooden
seemed every inch the gracious superstar. But it was all a terrible
mirage. Although the Mets won the World Series in 1986, Klapisch
contends that Gooden already was beginning to succumb to the many
temptations available to him. By the following spring, Doc was
a habitual cocaine user. Along the way, Doc was involved in an
ugly Rodney King-like altercation during a police search of Gooden's
car in his hometown of Tampa. Even though he asked for and received
counseling through the Mets, Gooden continued to drink heavily
and never really kicked his dependency. By 1994, he was back on
cocaine, then promptly failed a drug test and was suspended from
baseball for a year.

Gooden's rehabilitation has been a rocky one, filled with false
starts, sudden drinking binges and a failed visit to the famed
Betty Ford clinic. Circumstances became so bleak that Gooden was
frightened to play with his kids simply because he was too high
on drugs.

Somehow, Gooden was able

finally to regain control and join a Florida rehab group filled
with hard-core street junkies, not middle-class recreational users.
Gooden eventually tells Klapisch, "I sure don't want my kids
to think of their father as some junkie who couldn't handle success."

Given a second chance by George Steinbrenner, Doc signed with
the Yankees this past winter in hopes of recapturing his old New
York glory days. The no-hitter seems to be a sign that he is on
the road to recovery.

The book's other subject, Darryl Strawberry, saddled with his
own personal problems, still is struggling to make it all the
way back, toiling at present for the St. Paul Saints in the independent
Northern League. But Gooden's success has to be encouraging to
the former Mets outfielder.

No matter what happens, their battle against substance abuse will
continue for the rest of their lives. As Klapisch sorrowfully
observes in High and Tight's introduction, "Once, they owned
the future. Today Strawberry and Gooden's only stake is to the
next twenty-four hours, which they pray will keep them sober."

Review by David Plaut. Our regular book reviewer, Plaut is
an Emmy winning producer with NFL Films.